News: Faculty

Having solved a central mystery about the “twirliness” of tornadoes and other types of vortices, William Irvine has set his sights on turbulence, the white whale of classical physics.

Wah has been selected to be an APS Fellow for leadership in the experimental study of rare neutral kaon decays, in particular, the search for KL to pi0 nu nu-bar, the so-called golden mode of rare kaon decays.

Professors Aash Cleark and Liang Jiang from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering became APS fellows as well.

Prof. Young-Kee Kim, an eminent experimental physicist at the University of Chicago, has been elected future president of the American Physical Society. She will assume the position in 2024, when she will become the ninth UChicago scientist to do so.

Grandi in one of the final phases of XENONnT Time Projection Chamber assembly. The next generation detector is expected to feature an active volume from 5 to 10 times larger.

Researchers have big ideas for the potential of quantum technology which all depend on a major technological feat: being able to build and control systems of quantum particles, which are among the smallest objects in the universe.
That goal is now a step closer with the publication of a new method by University of Chicago scientists. Published April 28 in Nature, the paper shows how to bring multiple molecules at once into a single quantum state.

Scientists planning future particle accelerators and synchrotron light sources strive for tighter, more powerful electron beams. But as beams get narrower, it becomes harder to measure important properties. Now, Ihar Lobach of the University of Chicago and colleagues have demonstrated a new way to measure a beam’s vertical emittance more precisely than existing methods.

See also from Fermilab

The award, inaugurated this year and recognizing curiosity-driven basic research in chemistry and physics, supports the investigators’ research with $2 million over five years to their respective universities. Irvine, who researches fundamental problems in fluid dynamics and condensed matter, is one of two scientists chosen.

Prof. Emeritus Roger Hildebrand, who worked on the Manhattan Project as an undergraduate before conducting pioneering work in particle physics and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, died Jan. 21. He was 98.

NASA has chosen four small-scale astrophysics missions for further concept development in a new program called Pioneers. 

PUEO is a balloon mission designed to launch from Antarctica that will detect signals from ultra-high energy neutrinos. The principal investigator is Abigail Vieregg of the University of Chicago.

Michel Fruchart has been named one of four recipients of the 2020-2021 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding postdoctoral researchers. He was nominated by his supervisor, Vincenzo Vitelli, and will be recieve a $10,000 prize.

Argonne physicist searches for new uses for X-ray lasers and ways to support junior scientists.

photo credit Kenneth Johnson

The XENON1T detector, tucked into an Italian mountainside to search for signs of a mysterious substance in the universe called dark matter, has picked up a new bump in the data that cannot be explained by current models.
On June 17, Evan Shockley, graduate student in the group of Professor Grandi, presented the results of a new analysis of XENON1T data searching for anomalies in the electron recoil channels.

Professor Sidney Nagel is one of three UChicago professors and two UChicago alumni from a variety of disciplines elected to the American Philosophical Society this year. Congratulations to him for this remarkable accomplishment!

Paolo Privitera has been selected as a winner of the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring.

Professor Kim has been named the 2019 Scientist of the Year jointly by the Korean Scientists and Engineers Association (US) and the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (Korea). Congratulations!